A. INTRODUCTION
Street Car Named Desire is one of American play. It consist of several aspects such as illusion, loneliness, desire, etc. one of those aspects that is interesting to be discussed is desire because it closes with human problem especially American people. Living in America leads people to be optimistic hope much in their life. A good desire will be very important for the next life. This paper is aimed to reveal what kinds of desire that is covered in this play through the character and the elements of desire that reflected there.
In analyzing this play, the perspective, which is used here, is Psychoanalysis because it related with the behavior of major character focused on Blanch as the major character that shows her mental illness, crazy, after failing in reaching the desire that she has.
B. DISCUSSION
1. PSYCHOANALITIC’S VIEW
Psychoanalytical studies was begun by Sigmund Freud and developed by Carl Gustav Jung. Freud had applied his scientific knowledge to an approach to literature (Pritchard, 1956: 221). With his psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud opened the door for dreams to become a subject of scientifical research. He became interested in dreams when dealing with his patients because they were telling dreams spontaneously. He soon systematically included interpretation of dreams in psychoanalysis right beside hypnosis and free association. In the end of 19th century he eventually researched the mechanism of dreaming. The analysis of dreams is indispensable tool in therapy for each psychoanalyst since then, and for Freud, dreams are even the key to theoretical understanding of subconscious. He explained also dreams of people, who did not suffer from mental illness, in psychoanalytic way and so he was changing his psychotherapy in theory in the very beginning. The Freudian approach (Ryan, 1999) assumes that a mind has two components conscious and unconscious. The unconscious is the site of sexual instinct and of desires and feelings that are considered unacceptable by the conscious mind. The struggle between unconscious instinct and desire on the one hard and the force of repression exercised by the ego on the other result in the displacement and distortion of unconsciousness contents as they strive for expression.
The most famous model of human physics is Freud’s later version of the topographic model, the tripartite model. Freud came to see personality as having three aspects, which work together to produce all of our complex behaviors: the Id, the Ego and the Superego. All 3 components need to be well-balanced in order to have good amount of psychological energy available and to have reasonable mental health.
However, the Ego has a difficult time dealing with the competing demands of the Superego and the Id. According to the psychoanalytic view, this psychological conflict is an intrinsic and pervasive part of human experience. The conflict between the Id and Superego, negotiated by the Ego, is one of the fundamental psychological battles all people face. The way in which a person characteristically resolves the instant gratification vs. longer-term reward dilemma in many ways comes to reflect on their "character".
The irrational, instinctual, unknown, unconscious parts of the physic Freud calls the id. Containing our secret desires, our darkest wishes, and most intense fears, the id wishes only to fulfill the urges of the pleasure principle. In addition, it houses the libido, the source of all our psychosexual desires and all our psychic energy.
The second is the ego, the rational, the logical, waking part of the mind, although much of its activities remain in the unconscious. Whereas id operates according to the pleasure principle, the ego operates in harmony with the reality principle.
The superego, acts as the internal censor, causing us to make moral judgment in light of social pressures. It operates according to the morality principle and serves primarily to protect society and us from the id. Representing all of society’s moral restriction, the superego serves as a filtering agent suppressing the desires and instinct forbidden by society and thrusting them back into the unconscious (Bressler, 1999: 151-152) The Superego has two subsystems: Ego Ideal and Conscience. The Ego Ideal provides rules for good behavior, and standards of excellence towards which the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what the child’s parents approve of or value. The Conscience is the rules about what constitutes bad behavior. The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels mum or dad will disapprove of or punish.
The Superego is the moral part of us and develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers. Many equate the superego with the conscience as it dictates our belief of right and wrong.
In a healthy person, according to Freud, the ego is the strongest so that it can satisfy the needs of the id, not upset the superego, and still take into consideration the reality of every situation. Not an easy job by any means, but if the id gets too strong, impulses and self gratification take over the person's life. If the superego becomes to strong, the person would be driven by rigid morals, would be judgmental and unbending in his or her interactions with the world.
2. THE AUTHOR’S OUTLOOK
Thomas Lanier Williams was born on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. The second of three children, his family life was full of tension. His parents, a shoe salesman and the daughter of a minister, often engaged in violent arguments that frightened his sister Rose.
In 1927, Williams got his first taste of literary fame when he took third place in a national essay contest sponsored by The Smart Set magazine. In 1929, he was admitted to the University of Missouri where he saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and decided to become a playwright. But his degree was interrupted when his father forced him to withdraw from college and work at the International Shoe Company. There he worked with a young man named Stanley Kowalski who would later resurface as a character in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Eventually, Tom returned to school. In 1937, he had two of his plays (Candles to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind) produced by Mummers of St. Louis, and in 1938, he graduated from the University of Iowa. After failing to find work in Chicago, he moved to New Orleans and changed his name from "Tom" to "Tennessee" which was the state of his father's birth.
Many people believe that Tennessee used his own familial relationships as inspiration for the play. His own mother, who is often compared to the controlling Amanda, allowed doctors to perform a frontal lobotomy on Tennessee's sister Rose, an event that greatly disturbed Williams who cared for Rose throughout much of her adult life. Elia Kazan (who directed many of Williams' greatests successes) said of Tennessee: "Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." The Glass Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the season.
Williams followed up his first major critical success with several other Broadway hits including such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, A Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and reached an even larger world-wide audience in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into major motion pictures. Later plays which were also made into motion pictures include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for which he earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending, and Night of the Iguana.
Tennessee Williams met and fell in love with Frank Merlo in 1947 while living in New Orleans. Merlo, a second generation Sicilian American who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, was a steadying influence in Williams' chaotic life. But in 1961, Merlo died of Lung Cancer and the playwright went into a deep depression that lasted for ten years. In fact, Williams struggled with depression throughout most of his life and lived with the constant fear that he would go insane as did his sister Rose. For much of this period, he battled addictions to prescription drugs and alcohol.
On February 24, 1983, Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap at his New York City residence at the Hotel Elysee. He is buried in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to twenty-five full length plays, Williams produced dozens of short plays and screenplays, two novels, a novella, sixty short stories, over one-hundred poems and an autobiography. Among his many awards, he won two Pulitzer Prizes and four New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards
3. GREAT DESIRE IN TENNESSE WILIAM’S STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE
Street Car Named Desire has a symbolic meaning, not only a usual sentences but it has a deep meaning that has an important role through the whole play. To make it easier to understand, the writer needs to explain the key words.
Street – Car : Tram namely a vehicle that carries passengers and is driven by electricity. It symbolizes that in taking the journey should be paid by sacrifice and the problems of life will come and go because people should get on the tram and get off. It is only a tool to accompany the journey of life.
Desire : A strong wish to have or to do something. It symbolizes that people should wish to do or to act to reach the ideal.
Street Car Named Desire means the journey of life that is filled by strong hope to reach a better life. The journey needs sacrifice and struggle because the problem of life come and go automatically like rain that comes without prediction. Those hopes continuously develop and exist except the death that stopped it.
In this play Street Car Named Desire is the reflection of Blanche desire to get a new life, a better life in New Orleans. After she loses everything that she has in Bell Reve, either the plantation or the family. Besides, Street Car is the transportation tool that brings Blanche fromBellReve to Elysion field (Stella’s apartment) after taking Street Car Named Desire she transfer to one-called Cemeteries. That is proving that Street Car Named Desire is the beginning of zeal to reach better condition.
Blanche opposite of death is desire. Blanche means love as well as sexual desire— the need for connection with another person. She does not admire the raw desire embodied by Stanley, even though it is sexual passion that makes Stella and Stanley (as well, in a lesser way, as Steve and Eunice) so fully alive in a way that Blanche is not. Stanley and Stella know how to keep the “colored lights” going, which is their term for rewarding sexual relations. Everything about Stanley suggests that sexual fulfillment is the center of his life. The playwright emphasizes this in the stage direction that accompanies Stanley’s first appearance: “Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes.” His sexuality is the “complete and satisfying center” of his life.
Blanche, on the other hand, finds that her desires are continually frustrated. She is associated with death—the death of her relatives at Belle Reve, and the death by suicide of her husband, which still haunt her. Reminders of death keep popping up to torment Blanche—the inscription on Mitch’s cigarette case, the Mexican woman who sells flowers for funerals. It was to stave off this death-impulse that Blanche indulged in promiscuous sex after her husband’s death. This was simply an attempt to keep life going, to stop her from withering inside, and to try to rekindle the transforming love and desire she had felt for her husband. But sensitive Blanche is no healthy animal like Stanley, which is why she is bound for failure and madness, while the final sight of Stanley is of him comforting Stella and reaching inside her blouse.
To gain the ideality people should have desire even great desire to support their willing reach the target that they made before. American tends to have a big hope, a great desire to improve their life. It is the major characteristics of life to achieve the goal of life. It is unavoidable that is desire must have obstacles and and it willl be more challenging by several problems. Realizing that, in the play we can se the great desire that is reflected by the major character namely Blanche. It can be seen from the element of desire that is found in the play. They are as follows:
1. Desire to get the better live
Blanche struggles to get a better life. She seriously endeavors to leave the suffering of life. The story begins with the voice of blue piano. It expresses the spirit of life that is goes on. The blue piano the voices of people on the sheet can be heard over leaping.
After time being, Blanche comes to the Elysian field, New Orleans to look for her sister Stella.
“Eunice : What’s the matter, honey? Are you lost?
Blanche : They told me to take a streetcar named desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six block and get off Elysian field.
Eunice : This here is Elysian field” (William 97-98)
Knowing the place where her sister is. Blanche starts asking the people where her sister stays at exactly. She was curious and strongly willing to meet her.
“Blanche : I’m looking for my sister, Stelle Du Bois. I mean Mrs. Stanley Leowalski.” (William: 97)
Those quotation reflect one of Blenche’s desire to meet her sister Stella after she losing all the people that she loves. Unfortunately, Stella off at that at time so Blance waits her sister at the apartment accompanied by Uniece until Stella comes.
Stella : Blance!
Blance : Stella, oh Stella, Stella? Stella for star! (Williams:99)
Blance explains to her sister wants happen to her.
“I stayed and struggle. I stayed at Belle Reve and tried to hold it together … but all the burden descended on my shoulders” (Williams:104)
“I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the grave yard! Farther, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful away!” (William:105)
This is the prove that’s although Blance lost almost everything that she have. She tries to build her great desire to survive in this life. She hopes that in New Orleans she’ll get better life at least she can meet her beloved sister even stay with her to share her sadness.
2. Desire to keep the good appearance
Blance tried to stay longer in Stella’s apartemen although that apartment regarded as slum area and bad enough. It’s contradictory with her hope that she imagines new or leans is better then Belle Rove hoping that one day will better. Although she lives with her sister in such condition but she has a great to keep her appearance. She excited to asks about her appearance to her sister Stella.
“How do I look?”
“Lovely, Blanch…” (William:121)
3. Desire in keeping love to her husband
Another desire of Blance is keeping her love for beloved husband although he’s younger then even her students at the past. It seems that she still keep his love-letter although he was die.
“These are love-letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy … Give those back to me” (William:117)
She also remembering him when she make a cheat with Mitch.
“He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery love. All at once and much, much too completely” (William:158).
Realizing that, she can not find the “boy” (her husband) anymore she accepts the condition that she should forget it in order leasing her sadness. Fortunately she find Mitch which cares her and pay attention to her much. Apparently Mich falls in love with her and she comfort getting love from Mitch although the shadow of her past haunting her.
“You need some body. And I need somebody, too. Could it be you me, Blanch?” (Williams:159)
4. Desire for her sister to leave Steanly
Blanch has an idea for her sister Stella. She expect that her sister wants leave Stanley because she thinks that Stanley has bad attitude. She promises that she’ll asking help to her friend shop Huntleigh her find. Contradictory Stella refuse that. Stella prefer stay there in Elysan fields with her beloved husband although the condition is not good enough.
Blance almost forget her birthday and Stella remembering it to Blanche that’s her birthday the Blanche singing.
“Without sister attention makes her happy and feel calm because she still get her sister love when everything’s gone from her. This case also strengthen her desire to search beautiful life in every occasion.
Entertaining her sister Stella that pregnant she said that the baby’s coming would be the light of dark life. It means the life more beauty and attractive.
“You ought to save them for baby’s birthday. Oh, I hope candles are going to glow in his live and I hope that his eyes are going to be like candles like two blue candles lighten in a white cake” (Williams:171)
5. Desire to get a new lover
The day of baby’s coming comes and Blanche stay alone at the apartment. At the same time Mitch comes to her. Blanches hopes to her. Blanches hopes that she’ll get happiness from Mitch but the reality is vice-versa. Blanches hopes that she’ll get happiness from Mitch but the reality is vice-versa. Blanche admits to having many intimacies with strangers. After Allan death she says intimacies with the strangers wall all that she seem able to fill her empty heart with. Mitch feels that Blanche is a liar and has lie him. It seem when Blanche ask him.
“Mitch : what I been missing all summer
Blanche : That Marry me, Mitch!
It seem that Blanche tried seriously to teas Mitch to get protection because she didn’t have anyone more to lay her love even her sister doesn’t want to accept her advice and also stenley treat her badly.
Mitch : I don’t think I want to many you are any more
Blanche : No?
About two A.M. on the same evening, Blanche and Mitch return from their date. Mitch apologizes, feeling that Blanche did not have a good time on their date. Blanche insists that it was all her fault. Blanche asks Mitch, in French, if he would like to sleep with her tonight. But he, of course, does not understand the foreign language, and when he attempts to touch her in any way, she reproves him for not being a gentleman. "I guess," she says, "It's just that I have old-fashioned ideals." Mitch tells Blanche about his dying mother, and suggests that she wants him to marry and settle down before she passes away. This is, of course, just what Blanche is after. Blanche tells Mitch about her first husband, the boy who wrote her the poems. Apparently, the boy had committed suicide after Blanche caught him having sex with another man.
The scene ends with talk of a serious relationship:
Mitch: You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be--you and me, Blanche?
She stares at him vacantly for a moment. Then with a soft cry huddles in his embrace.
Blanche: Sometimes--there's God--so quickly!
All those great desire leads Blanche has high to reach the best one unfortunately she only can hope and wish but the reality didn’t help her ever contradiction to her hope. It can be seen that she fail in reaching the desire that she have.
Mitch : You are not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother … (William:180).
When this action happens and Blanche look feels the distance piano is low and blue. It symbolizes the sadness and the hope that is unreached. So the spirit of live lost.
Blanche has been drinking steadily since Mitch's departure. She has been packing her trunk. Stanley appears. He, too, has had a few drinks. He has dropped Stella off at the hospital to have the baby, but it won't come until the morning so he has come home for a few hours. Blanche is frightened at the prospect of spending the evening alone with Stanley, but she feigns indifference. She claims to have received an invitation from Shep Huntleigh to join him on a Caribbean cruise, but Stanley isn't buying her stories anymore. He begins to undress in front of her--puts on the silk pajamas he wore on his wedding night--then rapes her, saying, "We've had this date with each other from the beginning!"Another failure of her desire is she cannot reach her idealistic desire even at last of her desire she fail and god mental illness namely “crazy” after she was raped by Stanley (Stella’s husband).
This event makes Blanche different from the day before even she got heart depression. When the doctor comes she said that he is not the gentleman that she was expecting. She flees in the bed room. The nurse is sent in after her. Blanche screams and tries to break past the nurse, but the heavy women catches her and pin on her arms. Finally, the doctor arm saying “Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (William:196)
C. CONCLUSION
The great desire that is expected by Blanche is desire to life in happiness; get a better life and survival. Those desires lead her seriously endeavor to reach it. Unfortunately she fails in reaching them even she got mental hurting. Id, ego and superego that Blanche has is not developed well until her desire powered all of her ambition to reach the things that actually difficult to be reach. After facing the reality that different from what she hoped before she cannot control her mind and fall into the tragic event that is raped and she feels all her struggle before was in vain and un useful for her future life. She thought that her future of life was destroyed. Her superego controlled much to her until the rest of the time she felt guilty for her life for her failure getting a better life and happiness.
Whatever will be just built our hopes to reach the ideal and the best result for the future life. The failure of certain effort may strengthen us to be better but some times bring to the great depression. No matter the result just try to hold it man purpose God disposes.
References
Bode, Carl, 1987, Highlight of American Literature, 1978, Washington DC
Bressler, Charles E. 1999. Literary Criticism on Introduction to Theory and Practice. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Cooper. J. C. 1993. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional symbol. Lofelon: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Horby, 1987, Oxford Advance Leaner’s Dictionary of Current English, Oxford University Press
Http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-streetcarnameddesire/?gclid=CIiawYKhj5gCFQcnbwod8FhLCw
Pitchhard, John Henderson, 1956. Criticism in America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Reaske, Chriptopher Russel, 1996, How to Analyze Drama, Monarch Press, New York.
Selden, Raman, 1993, A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, Harvester Wheat Sheaf New York
William, Tennessee, Street Car Named Desire, Nelson Doubled Day Inc, Gordon City, New York
In analyzing this play, the perspective, which is used here, is Psychoanalysis because it related with the behavior of major character focused on Blanch as the major character that shows her mental illness, crazy, after failing in reaching the desire that she has.
B. DISCUSSION
1. PSYCHOANALITIC’S VIEW
Psychoanalytical studies was begun by Sigmund Freud and developed by Carl Gustav Jung. Freud had applied his scientific knowledge to an approach to literature (Pritchard, 1956: 221). With his psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud opened the door for dreams to become a subject of scientifical research. He became interested in dreams when dealing with his patients because they were telling dreams spontaneously. He soon systematically included interpretation of dreams in psychoanalysis right beside hypnosis and free association. In the end of 19th century he eventually researched the mechanism of dreaming. The analysis of dreams is indispensable tool in therapy for each psychoanalyst since then, and for Freud, dreams are even the key to theoretical understanding of subconscious. He explained also dreams of people, who did not suffer from mental illness, in psychoanalytic way and so he was changing his psychotherapy in theory in the very beginning. The Freudian approach (Ryan, 1999) assumes that a mind has two components conscious and unconscious. The unconscious is the site of sexual instinct and of desires and feelings that are considered unacceptable by the conscious mind. The struggle between unconscious instinct and desire on the one hard and the force of repression exercised by the ego on the other result in the displacement and distortion of unconsciousness contents as they strive for expression.
The most famous model of human physics is Freud’s later version of the topographic model, the tripartite model. Freud came to see personality as having three aspects, which work together to produce all of our complex behaviors: the Id, the Ego and the Superego. All 3 components need to be well-balanced in order to have good amount of psychological energy available and to have reasonable mental health.
However, the Ego has a difficult time dealing with the competing demands of the Superego and the Id. According to the psychoanalytic view, this psychological conflict is an intrinsic and pervasive part of human experience. The conflict between the Id and Superego, negotiated by the Ego, is one of the fundamental psychological battles all people face. The way in which a person characteristically resolves the instant gratification vs. longer-term reward dilemma in many ways comes to reflect on their "character".
The irrational, instinctual, unknown, unconscious parts of the physic Freud calls the id. Containing our secret desires, our darkest wishes, and most intense fears, the id wishes only to fulfill the urges of the pleasure principle. In addition, it houses the libido, the source of all our psychosexual desires and all our psychic energy.
The second is the ego, the rational, the logical, waking part of the mind, although much of its activities remain in the unconscious. Whereas id operates according to the pleasure principle, the ego operates in harmony with the reality principle.
The superego, acts as the internal censor, causing us to make moral judgment in light of social pressures. It operates according to the morality principle and serves primarily to protect society and us from the id. Representing all of society’s moral restriction, the superego serves as a filtering agent suppressing the desires and instinct forbidden by society and thrusting them back into the unconscious (Bressler, 1999: 151-152) The Superego has two subsystems: Ego Ideal and Conscience. The Ego Ideal provides rules for good behavior, and standards of excellence towards which the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what the child’s parents approve of or value. The Conscience is the rules about what constitutes bad behavior. The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels mum or dad will disapprove of or punish.
The Superego is the moral part of us and develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers. Many equate the superego with the conscience as it dictates our belief of right and wrong.
In a healthy person, according to Freud, the ego is the strongest so that it can satisfy the needs of the id, not upset the superego, and still take into consideration the reality of every situation. Not an easy job by any means, but if the id gets too strong, impulses and self gratification take over the person's life. If the superego becomes to strong, the person would be driven by rigid morals, would be judgmental and unbending in his or her interactions with the world.
2. THE AUTHOR’S OUTLOOK
Thomas Lanier Williams was born on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. The second of three children, his family life was full of tension. His parents, a shoe salesman and the daughter of a minister, often engaged in violent arguments that frightened his sister Rose.
In 1927, Williams got his first taste of literary fame when he took third place in a national essay contest sponsored by The Smart Set magazine. In 1929, he was admitted to the University of Missouri where he saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and decided to become a playwright. But his degree was interrupted when his father forced him to withdraw from college and work at the International Shoe Company. There he worked with a young man named Stanley Kowalski who would later resurface as a character in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Eventually, Tom returned to school. In 1937, he had two of his plays (Candles to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind) produced by Mummers of St. Louis, and in 1938, he graduated from the University of Iowa. After failing to find work in Chicago, he moved to New Orleans and changed his name from "Tom" to "Tennessee" which was the state of his father's birth.
Many people believe that Tennessee used his own familial relationships as inspiration for the play. His own mother, who is often compared to the controlling Amanda, allowed doctors to perform a frontal lobotomy on Tennessee's sister Rose, an event that greatly disturbed Williams who cared for Rose throughout much of her adult life. Elia Kazan (who directed many of Williams' greatests successes) said of Tennessee: "Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." The Glass Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the season.
Williams followed up his first major critical success with several other Broadway hits including such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, A Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and reached an even larger world-wide audience in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into major motion pictures. Later plays which were also made into motion pictures include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for which he earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending, and Night of the Iguana.
Tennessee Williams met and fell in love with Frank Merlo in 1947 while living in New Orleans. Merlo, a second generation Sicilian American who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, was a steadying influence in Williams' chaotic life. But in 1961, Merlo died of Lung Cancer and the playwright went into a deep depression that lasted for ten years. In fact, Williams struggled with depression throughout most of his life and lived with the constant fear that he would go insane as did his sister Rose. For much of this period, he battled addictions to prescription drugs and alcohol.
On February 24, 1983, Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap at his New York City residence at the Hotel Elysee. He is buried in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to twenty-five full length plays, Williams produced dozens of short plays and screenplays, two novels, a novella, sixty short stories, over one-hundred poems and an autobiography. Among his many awards, he won two Pulitzer Prizes and four New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards
3. GREAT DESIRE IN TENNESSE WILIAM’S STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE
Street Car Named Desire has a symbolic meaning, not only a usual sentences but it has a deep meaning that has an important role through the whole play. To make it easier to understand, the writer needs to explain the key words.
Street – Car : Tram namely a vehicle that carries passengers and is driven by electricity. It symbolizes that in taking the journey should be paid by sacrifice and the problems of life will come and go because people should get on the tram and get off. It is only a tool to accompany the journey of life.
Desire : A strong wish to have or to do something. It symbolizes that people should wish to do or to act to reach the ideal.
Street Car Named Desire means the journey of life that is filled by strong hope to reach a better life. The journey needs sacrifice and struggle because the problem of life come and go automatically like rain that comes without prediction. Those hopes continuously develop and exist except the death that stopped it.
In this play Street Car Named Desire is the reflection of Blanche desire to get a new life, a better life in New Orleans. After she loses everything that she has in Bell Reve, either the plantation or the family. Besides, Street Car is the transportation tool that brings Blanche fromBellReve to Elysion field (Stella’s apartment) after taking Street Car Named Desire she transfer to one-called Cemeteries. That is proving that Street Car Named Desire is the beginning of zeal to reach better condition.
Blanche opposite of death is desire. Blanche means love as well as sexual desire— the need for connection with another person. She does not admire the raw desire embodied by Stanley, even though it is sexual passion that makes Stella and Stanley (as well, in a lesser way, as Steve and Eunice) so fully alive in a way that Blanche is not. Stanley and Stella know how to keep the “colored lights” going, which is their term for rewarding sexual relations. Everything about Stanley suggests that sexual fulfillment is the center of his life. The playwright emphasizes this in the stage direction that accompanies Stanley’s first appearance: “Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes.” His sexuality is the “complete and satisfying center” of his life.
Blanche, on the other hand, finds that her desires are continually frustrated. She is associated with death—the death of her relatives at Belle Reve, and the death by suicide of her husband, which still haunt her. Reminders of death keep popping up to torment Blanche—the inscription on Mitch’s cigarette case, the Mexican woman who sells flowers for funerals. It was to stave off this death-impulse that Blanche indulged in promiscuous sex after her husband’s death. This was simply an attempt to keep life going, to stop her from withering inside, and to try to rekindle the transforming love and desire she had felt for her husband. But sensitive Blanche is no healthy animal like Stanley, which is why she is bound for failure and madness, while the final sight of Stanley is of him comforting Stella and reaching inside her blouse.
To gain the ideality people should have desire even great desire to support their willing reach the target that they made before. American tends to have a big hope, a great desire to improve their life. It is the major characteristics of life to achieve the goal of life. It is unavoidable that is desire must have obstacles and and it willl be more challenging by several problems. Realizing that, in the play we can se the great desire that is reflected by the major character namely Blanche. It can be seen from the element of desire that is found in the play. They are as follows:
1. Desire to get the better live
Blanche struggles to get a better life. She seriously endeavors to leave the suffering of life. The story begins with the voice of blue piano. It expresses the spirit of life that is goes on. The blue piano the voices of people on the sheet can be heard over leaping.
After time being, Blanche comes to the Elysian field, New Orleans to look for her sister Stella.
“Eunice : What’s the matter, honey? Are you lost?
Blanche : They told me to take a streetcar named desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six block and get off Elysian field.
Eunice : This here is Elysian field” (William 97-98)
Knowing the place where her sister is. Blanche starts asking the people where her sister stays at exactly. She was curious and strongly willing to meet her.
“Blanche : I’m looking for my sister, Stelle Du Bois. I mean Mrs. Stanley Leowalski.” (William: 97)
Those quotation reflect one of Blenche’s desire to meet her sister Stella after she losing all the people that she loves. Unfortunately, Stella off at that at time so Blance waits her sister at the apartment accompanied by Uniece until Stella comes.
Stella : Blance!
Blance : Stella, oh Stella, Stella? Stella for star! (Williams:99)
Blance explains to her sister wants happen to her.
“I stayed and struggle. I stayed at Belle Reve and tried to hold it together … but all the burden descended on my shoulders” (Williams:104)
“I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the grave yard! Farther, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful away!” (William:105)
This is the prove that’s although Blance lost almost everything that she have. She tries to build her great desire to survive in this life. She hopes that in New Orleans she’ll get better life at least she can meet her beloved sister even stay with her to share her sadness.
2. Desire to keep the good appearance
Blance tried to stay longer in Stella’s apartemen although that apartment regarded as slum area and bad enough. It’s contradictory with her hope that she imagines new or leans is better then Belle Rove hoping that one day will better. Although she lives with her sister in such condition but she has a great to keep her appearance. She excited to asks about her appearance to her sister Stella.
“How do I look?”
“Lovely, Blanch…” (William:121)
3. Desire in keeping love to her husband
Another desire of Blance is keeping her love for beloved husband although he’s younger then even her students at the past. It seems that she still keep his love-letter although he was die.
“These are love-letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy … Give those back to me” (William:117)
She also remembering him when she make a cheat with Mitch.
“He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery love. All at once and much, much too completely” (William:158).
Realizing that, she can not find the “boy” (her husband) anymore she accepts the condition that she should forget it in order leasing her sadness. Fortunately she find Mitch which cares her and pay attention to her much. Apparently Mich falls in love with her and she comfort getting love from Mitch although the shadow of her past haunting her.
“You need some body. And I need somebody, too. Could it be you me, Blanch?” (Williams:159)
4. Desire for her sister to leave Steanly
Blanch has an idea for her sister Stella. She expect that her sister wants leave Stanley because she thinks that Stanley has bad attitude. She promises that she’ll asking help to her friend shop Huntleigh her find. Contradictory Stella refuse that. Stella prefer stay there in Elysan fields with her beloved husband although the condition is not good enough.
Blance almost forget her birthday and Stella remembering it to Blanche that’s her birthday the Blanche singing.
“Without sister attention makes her happy and feel calm because she still get her sister love when everything’s gone from her. This case also strengthen her desire to search beautiful life in every occasion.
Entertaining her sister Stella that pregnant she said that the baby’s coming would be the light of dark life. It means the life more beauty and attractive.
“You ought to save them for baby’s birthday. Oh, I hope candles are going to glow in his live and I hope that his eyes are going to be like candles like two blue candles lighten in a white cake” (Williams:171)
5. Desire to get a new lover
The day of baby’s coming comes and Blanche stay alone at the apartment. At the same time Mitch comes to her. Blanches hopes to her. Blanches hopes that she’ll get happiness from Mitch but the reality is vice-versa. Blanches hopes that she’ll get happiness from Mitch but the reality is vice-versa. Blanche admits to having many intimacies with strangers. After Allan death she says intimacies with the strangers wall all that she seem able to fill her empty heart with. Mitch feels that Blanche is a liar and has lie him. It seem when Blanche ask him.
“Mitch : what I been missing all summer
Blanche : That Marry me, Mitch!
It seem that Blanche tried seriously to teas Mitch to get protection because she didn’t have anyone more to lay her love even her sister doesn’t want to accept her advice and also stenley treat her badly.
Mitch : I don’t think I want to many you are any more
Blanche : No?
About two A.M. on the same evening, Blanche and Mitch return from their date. Mitch apologizes, feeling that Blanche did not have a good time on their date. Blanche insists that it was all her fault. Blanche asks Mitch, in French, if he would like to sleep with her tonight. But he, of course, does not understand the foreign language, and when he attempts to touch her in any way, she reproves him for not being a gentleman. "I guess," she says, "It's just that I have old-fashioned ideals." Mitch tells Blanche about his dying mother, and suggests that she wants him to marry and settle down before she passes away. This is, of course, just what Blanche is after. Blanche tells Mitch about her first husband, the boy who wrote her the poems. Apparently, the boy had committed suicide after Blanche caught him having sex with another man.
The scene ends with talk of a serious relationship:
Mitch: You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be--you and me, Blanche?
She stares at him vacantly for a moment. Then with a soft cry huddles in his embrace.
Blanche: Sometimes--there's God--so quickly!
All those great desire leads Blanche has high to reach the best one unfortunately she only can hope and wish but the reality didn’t help her ever contradiction to her hope. It can be seen that she fail in reaching the desire that she have.
Mitch : You are not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother … (William:180).
When this action happens and Blanche look feels the distance piano is low and blue. It symbolizes the sadness and the hope that is unreached. So the spirit of live lost.
Blanche has been drinking steadily since Mitch's departure. She has been packing her trunk. Stanley appears. He, too, has had a few drinks. He has dropped Stella off at the hospital to have the baby, but it won't come until the morning so he has come home for a few hours. Blanche is frightened at the prospect of spending the evening alone with Stanley, but she feigns indifference. She claims to have received an invitation from Shep Huntleigh to join him on a Caribbean cruise, but Stanley isn't buying her stories anymore. He begins to undress in front of her--puts on the silk pajamas he wore on his wedding night--then rapes her, saying, "We've had this date with each other from the beginning!"Another failure of her desire is she cannot reach her idealistic desire even at last of her desire she fail and god mental illness namely “crazy” after she was raped by Stanley (Stella’s husband).
This event makes Blanche different from the day before even she got heart depression. When the doctor comes she said that he is not the gentleman that she was expecting. She flees in the bed room. The nurse is sent in after her. Blanche screams and tries to break past the nurse, but the heavy women catches her and pin on her arms. Finally, the doctor arm saying “Whoever you are - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (William:196)
C. CONCLUSION
The great desire that is expected by Blanche is desire to life in happiness; get a better life and survival. Those desires lead her seriously endeavor to reach it. Unfortunately she fails in reaching them even she got mental hurting. Id, ego and superego that Blanche has is not developed well until her desire powered all of her ambition to reach the things that actually difficult to be reach. After facing the reality that different from what she hoped before she cannot control her mind and fall into the tragic event that is raped and she feels all her struggle before was in vain and un useful for her future life. She thought that her future of life was destroyed. Her superego controlled much to her until the rest of the time she felt guilty for her life for her failure getting a better life and happiness.
Whatever will be just built our hopes to reach the ideal and the best result for the future life. The failure of certain effort may strengthen us to be better but some times bring to the great depression. No matter the result just try to hold it man purpose God disposes.
References
Bode, Carl, 1987, Highlight of American Literature, 1978, Washington DC
Bressler, Charles E. 1999. Literary Criticism on Introduction to Theory and Practice. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Cooper. J. C. 1993. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional symbol. Lofelon: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Horby, 1987, Oxford Advance Leaner’s Dictionary of Current English, Oxford University Press
Http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-streetcarnameddesire/?gclid=CIiawYKhj5gCFQcnbwod8FhLCw
Pitchhard, John Henderson, 1956. Criticism in America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Reaske, Chriptopher Russel, 1996, How to Analyze Drama, Monarch Press, New York.
Selden, Raman, 1993, A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, Harvester Wheat Sheaf New York
William, Tennessee, Street Car Named Desire, Nelson Doubled Day Inc, Gordon City, New York
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